For Vusi Thembekwayo, Focus Leads To Big Wins

Consider this: Over the past 30 years, the Caribbean Islands have produced an unusual amount of sprinting champions.

In addition, in 75 years, Jamaica has won 42 Commonwealth golds and 14 Olympic gold medals. During the last Olympics, Jamaica took all pole positions in the 200m to achieve an astounding single-nation flag raising celebration.

How does a small island nation perform at this level? Jamaica is a country of 2,85 million people. The US has a population of 400 million people. So, the US has a far larger population pool from which to pull talent. And it has much deeper tax revenues with which to support athletes and dominate the competition. So why do Jamaicans routinely beat Americans?

This is not an anomaly. In the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s, the US was losing more than its fair share of sprint and middle-distance races to the United Kingdom.

The UK, of course, also had a much smaller population than the US. So, does size matter, and what can entrepreneurs learn from these examples?

1. Win at a Single Thing

Notice that Jamaica is not beating the US at the bobsled contest in the Winter Olympics. Whilst Cool Runnings is a very entertaining movie with many iconic scenes, Jamaica has understood its best odds at building a formidable team that is able to compete beyond its structural constraints is if it focuses on a single pursuit. Be the best at one thing, rather than mediocre at many.

Image credit: Marc Lecureuil and Image Pistol inc

2. Embrace the Learning Curve

Nobody arrives at the place of competence without deliberate and consistent effort over a period of time. Effort + Time = Competence.

Athletics is part of Jamaica’s tuition in public schools. From early primary school, learners are imbued in the culture of athletic excellence as a part of their Jamaican heritage. Introducing children to the sport in their formative years means that they understand the commitment required to reach proficiency in athletics.

Usain Bolt didn’t even make the semi-finals of the Athens Olympics, his first Olympian outing. Many thought that he didn’t have the temperament to compete in the world’s most prestigious event. However, after many races (as well as a car accident and a string of injuries) Usain Bolt recorded the fastest time in more than three thousand years of Olympics history in Beijing.

The ‘arch of success’ is exactly that, an arch. It is not a linear function of victories and podium finishes. It is full of injuries, frustrations, mishaps, doubt, fear — but never resignation to mediocrity.

3. Use the Power of Homogeneity

Have you noticed the build of the people (specifically men) from Jamaica is very similar? There is very little difference in their height. Being an island nation, they have a similar diet across the narrow expanse of the country.

Couple this with the fact that Jamaica was a slave island where the strongest slaves of West Africa were traded.

These brutal slave traders didn’t understand the impact they would have on the world of modern sports. A small country. A deep national culture of sports. A strong gene pool, and similar diet across the country has birthed arguably the fastest men and women on earth.

When there is homogeneity and singularity in how you do business (culture), in why you are in business (higher purpose) then size ceases to matter.

As managers and leaders, you will fight with players bigger than you and far better resourced. With homogeneity in organisational culture and purpose, you could neutralise their advantage.

As you build your business and face tough market forces, competitors that are far better resourced, customers that are as disloyal as they are unforgiving and the omnipresent mental demon of self-doubt, remember that small can (and often does) trump big. Focus on a single thing. Embrace the lessons along the way. Build a homogeneous team.

Mr. Vusi Thembekwayo has been an Independent Non-Executive Director of at RBA Holdings Ltd. since May 14, 2013. Mr. Thembekwayo has already collected numerous accolades and awards as businessperson, entrepreneur and international public speaker. Mr. Thembekwayo completed a PDBA and a course on advanced valuation techniques with the Gordon Institute of Business Science and completed a Management Acceleration Programme (Cum Laude) with the Wits Business School. His speaking achievements include the international hit talk “The Black Sheep” which he delivered to the Top 40 CEOs in Southern Africa, addressing the Australian Houses of Parliament and speaking at the British House of Commons. To add to this, Vusi speaks in 4 of the 7 continents over 350 000 people each year.

Why Growth Could Be The Worst Thing To Happen To Your Business

We’re constantly fed this idea that if our business isn’t growing, it’s failing. Fortunately, like anything in business, one rule doesn’t always apply.

This is where business advice and reputable studies differ. Rapid or unchecked growth can end up being the downfall of a business, instead of its guiding light. It’s not that growth is bad or should be avoided at all costs, it’s just that it should be questioned before proceeding.

Growing our businesses could be the worst decision we make for the longevity of them. Let’s look at five reasons why growth may not make sense for our companies.

1. Resilience

As Dean Becker, CEO of Adaptiv Learning Systems, told me, the amount of resilience a person has is the most important part of their ability to succeed – and accounts for more than even their training, education or experience.

Luckily, our ability to be resilient is not just an innate trait we’re either born with or not. Being resilient requires that we focus on and work towards developing three traits:

Having a greater sense of purpose for why we’re doing what we’re doing, even if things go wrong or aren’t currently working out.

Recognising that we cannot control everything, and recognising accepting reality for what it is – something we can steer but not fully be command of at all times.

Developing an ability to adapt as things change, so we can pivot with differences in the market, in customer requests and shifts in technology.

Being resilient as a business is much harder for a large organisation because there are simply too many resources at play, too many moving parts and too many shareholders making decisions to move quickly enough to adapt.

Smaller businesses, at their core, have less resources, less moving parts and less decisions makers, and can therefore be nimble enough to move with changes that could negatively affect a company.

2. Autonomy

Companies of one are becoming more popular because people want more control and autonomy in their lives, especially when it comes to their careers. This is why so many people are choosing this path: staying small (or even working for ourselves) lets us control our own life and job.

Smaller companies also set up Results-Only Work Environments (ROWEs), in which employees don’t have set schedules, all meetings are optional, and it’s entirely up to employees how they spend their time working. They can choose to work from home, they can work from 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM if it suits them, and they can sculpt their job however they want, as long as the results benefit the company as a whole. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson have defined and then studied ROWE implementations for more than a decade, and they found that in these kinds of autonomous environments, productivity goes up, employee satisfaction goes up, and turnover goes down.

3. Speed

Companies like Basecamp have a four-day workweek during the summer (no work on Fridays) because it helps them prioritise what’s important to work on and what they can let go of. The key for their employees is to figure out how to work smarter to accomplish tasks with the time they’ve got, not just harder. Smaller companies are afforded the same opportunity. We can question our systems, processes and structure to become more efficient and to achieve more with the same number of employees and in less time.

Speed is not merely about working faster. It’s about figuring out the best way to accomplish a task with new and efficient methods. This is the concept at work in the ROWE method: Employees no longer have to work a set amount of time, but are rewarded when they finish their tasks faster. By being smarter at getting more work done faster, we can create a more flexible schedule that fits work into our life in better ways.

Another aspect of speed in a company that questions growth is the ability to pivot quickly when a customer base or market change. As a solo worker or small company, this can be much easier to do, because we have less infrastructure to cut through.

4. Simplicity

Typically, as companies gain success or traction, they grow by taking on additional complexities. These complexities can often detract from a business’s original or primary focus, resulting in more costs and the investment of more time and money.

For a company at any size, simple rules, meaning simple processes and simple solutions typically win. Adding complexity is almost always well intentioned, especially at large corporations, where, as complicated processes are added to other complicated processes and systems, accomplishing any task requires more and more work on the job and not toward finishing the task itself. It can be a slippery slope. One step is added to a process without increasing its complexity too much, but then, after a few years of adding steps here and there, a task that once took a handful of steps now requires sign-off by six department heads, a legal review and a dozen or more meetings with stakeholders.

5. Durability

The current business paradigm teaches us that to make a lot of money or to achieve lasting success, we need to scale our businesses – as if larger businesses are less prone to fail or to become unprofitable. Before our imagined businesses are even off the ground, we need to create them with the sole purpose of growth – and possibly eventual sale for a huge profit. This paradigm, however, isn’t rooted in truth, nor does it hold up against critical investigation.

Although contrary to most popular business advice, growth as a main goal or performance metric can actually be quite dangerous to the long-term operation of a business. In 2012, researchers from the Startup Genome Project looked at data from more than 3,200 high growth startupsand found that more than 70 percent scaled prematurely through rapid growth and ended up failing – closing shop, selling off the business for cheap or having massive layoffs – because of it. The findings in this study where echoed in a similar study done by the Kauffman Foundation, where they found that 5 to 8 years after starting, more than two-thirds of high growth companies had to shut down due to the same reasons as the first study.

With these reasons in place, it may make sense to not grow and instead focus on where our business can do things better – instead of just in a bigger way. Let’s start to consider the idea that perhaps the byproduct of business success isn’t always growth and scale, maybe it’s just being able to have the freedom to make decisions that are best suited for the longevity of our business, the happiness of our customers and what makes the most sense to improving our bottom line.

Staying small doesn’t have to be a stepping-stone to something else, or the result of a business failure – rather, it can be an end goal or a smart long-term strategy. For businesses that question growth using the Company of One mindset, instead of assuming growth is always beneficial, we can think about what we can do to make our businesses better instead of just bigger.

Local Study Reveals Formalized Boards Drive Growth

One of the key differentiators between high-growth companies and listed businesses, and SMEs that do not grow beyond a certain ceiling, is whether or not the business has a formalized board structure in place.

Sirdar Group, Africa’s leading educator, appointer and guide to high-performance boards of privately-held companies and family businesses, has long held the belief that in order to truly scale, businesses need high-performance boards.

A new study conducted by Sirdar Group has focused on the value that high-performance boards offer companies in a bid to encourage SMEs and family-run businesses to follow best-practice in order to realise their growth potential.

Carl Bates, founder and CEO of Sirdar Group unpacks the key lessons from the study, and how SMEs can use these to drive growth.

1. What value do independent directors bring to boards? Why is this particularly important for privately-held companies and family businesses?

Ensuring you have an independent board member on your board is tantamount to ensuring your company makes use of an independent auditor. It’s imperative to have an independent perspective of the current performance, strategic direction and operational strategies of the business, not one that could be swayed by power, being a family member, job status or seniority on the board.

Let’s define what independent means in this scenario. An independent board member is not a director, shareholder, or employee, nor do they have any capital invested in the business. They are essentially paid consultants that are intellectually involved in the success and growth of the business.

Based on our recent survey, statistically it is shown that boards that comprise of at least one independent board member outperform those that do not have any. It therefore goes without saying that the more independent board members on a board, the higher the impact the board will have on the company performance.

When asked about the various directors and the value they add to the board, Independent Board Members were the least likely to be removed as the contribution they add is vital. Along with higher performance, the survey showed that boards with Independent Board members are more likely to implement a performance evaluation process, which is strongly recommended in most African governance codes.

2. Boards with independent directors are more likely to result in improved business results. Why is this the case?

Boards with independent directors tend to be those who have embraced the value of a third-party independent perspective. Whether they be family-owned or privately-held, they recognize the fact that they hold a shareholding in the company does not mean they have all the answers.

In turn, independent directors tend to have engaged in understanding what a high-performance board is, more so than where the only directors are also shareholders (and therefore not independent). Independent directors therefore understand the value of self-evaluation and taking time to consider how the board is actually performing.

The old adage ‘you manage what you measure’ comes to mind here. If a board is not measuring its own performance, what is its driver to improve? An annual board evaluation ensures this focus on a board being, as we would say at the Sirdar Group, ‘exceptionally critical’ of its own performance.

3. Do strong performing boards lead to businesses that perform well? Why?

Both the research and our own anecdotal evidence suggests that businesses with high-performance boards performance better. Internationally, the research also reinforces this. First, it is about understanding that a high-performance board is not one that is driven by compliance to codes and standards, it is one driven by ensuring increased performance for shareholders and other stakeholders. An effective methodology enables this to happen.

The reason businesses with a high-performance board perform better, in our view, is because they are being truly challenged by an independent party about the performance of the company. People who are removed enough to stay objective, yet involved enough to understand the business and its true indicators of performance, can add huge value to high-level strategic discussions and decisions.

4. Why did you conduct research into non-listed African board practices, particularly relating to privately-held company and family business board fees?

Remuneration and performance of boards of directors has been the subject of extensive conceptualisation and empirical research over many years. Internationally, most of this research has dealt with European and American-based companies. Alternatively, and particularly in Africa, it has focused on listed companies and public entities. We decided to fill this gap. Specifically, we want to support the achievement of meaningful economic impact by companies across the continent by supporting their ability to have truly high-performance boards. This research is one aspect of enabling this to happen.

Vital stats

In today’s highly competitive B2B landscape, growing market share requires a business to be a low-cost provider, the differentiated option, or operating in a niche market.

For many businesses, low-cost is not an option, either because it’s difficult to maintain value while driving price down, or because if you’re selling on price, you will always lose to a provider who comes in at a lower price point. It’s a race to the bottom.

You therefore need to differentiate or dominate a niche. Matt Brown, founder of Digital Kungfu, a storytelling production company, has focused on doing both. The business is focusing exclusively on helping tech companies with their marketing needs. The week Matt and his team made this decision, they needed to turn down a high six-figure deal with a company that didn’t align with their chosen niche target market. It was a painful decision, but it’s paid off. Within six months Digital Kungfu had quadrupled in size.

Entrepreneur chatted to Matt about making the decision to become a niche player, knowing when to say no, and the art of developing differentiated products.

1. What is the business case for focusing on a niche instead of a broader – but bigger – market?

You can’t be everything to everyone. If you try, you’ll just end up being invisible anyway. Take the Cloud services space for example. There are thousands of software resellers offering similar (or even the same) products to SMEs. Everyone is flooding the market with competing messages, trying to show their target audience the value of their product or service, and why customers should buy from them instead of their competitors.

The only way to combat this flood of information that your customers are receiving – and to differentiate yourself – is through positioning. Positioning is all about framing your scarcity and dictating your value.

People want to know that you understand their pain. It builds trust. Focusing on one sector helps you to become laser-focused on the problems that players in that sector face. When you become a niche provider, you’re immersed in your customer’s industry, needs, problems and solutions. You understand their problem best, and they accredit you with the solution.

2. Why does saying no to some things open new opportunities in others?

For three years Digital Kungfu was positioned as a storytelling production company for any client who wanted help telling their brand or product stories to their customers. When we looked at our client base though, we realised that over 90% of our portfolio was technology companies.

There was clearly something we were doing that aligned with technology clients, but we hadn’t made the decision to focus exclusively on this sector, which meant we were still trying to be everything to everybody. Our messaging and product offerings weren’t clear as a result.

The realisation that we were predominantly focused on tech companies made us step back and evaluate why. What made us different in this space? We started asking the companies we worked with and discovered that it was our agile approach to delivering branded content solutions that was really resonating with them. Our storytelling, branded content and agile marketing approach aligns extremely well with the way tech companies work. We’re fast, we’re affordable and we’re effective. In the technology space, speed is everything. Once I understood that, it made sense to focus all of our energy on this one sector. Yes, it means saying no to a lot of other sectors, but it also opens the opportunity to dominate this sector.

We made the decision that if we can’t own a market or an idea, we won’t do it. By focusing on tech clients, we’re becoming intimately involved in their business challenges, needs, language and how the sector as a whole works. That expertise is driving better solutions and engagement from our side, which only serves to add greater value to our clients.

3. You had to turn down a six-figure deal once you made this decision. How did you do it?

It wasn’t easy. Saying no to money when that is what your business does is incredibly difficult. Within a week of making the decision to niche down, we had to turn down a high six-figure deal with South Africa’s largest SME investment fund. We knew that if we didn’t make that choice however, that we would never be able to focus on our chosen niche. We wanted to go after a much bigger pie, and that begins with the right focus. It’s not what you say yes to that makes your business grow – in many cases it’s what you say no to.

4. Was there any lesson or advice that influenced the decision to become a niche player?

The book Play Bigger by Christopher Lockhead has been instrumental in shaping the way we approach category design thinking for our technology clients. I realised that we were utilising this methodology for our clients, but we weren’t following it ourselves at Digital Kungfu.

The theory behind category design is that companies that own their categories (the Category Kings), don’t sell better than their competitors – they sell different by introducing the world to a new category of product or service.

Uber, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Salesforce all did this. They own the markets that they play in because they marketed a different problem that the market didn’t know it had yet and when they did, they were accredited with the solution to the problem. They then gobbled up all the economics in their category, instead of feeding off the scraps of available market potential. To put this in perspective, Uber is valued at $120 billion, an eight times high valuation than their nearest competitor, Lyft which is valued at $15 billion.

I was already a big believer in this methodology; we just needed to implement it in our own business model and strategy. By focusing exclusively on a category, defining its problems and delivering a solution that is tailor-made for technology companies specifically, we are aiming to own the economics in our market.

I’ve received validation for our strategy from Christopher himself, who I interviewed on the Matt Brown Show. He literally wrote the book (Niche Down) about how to become legendary by being different. Most of us are tricked into believing that achieving personal and professional success means fitting in. What it really takes is the courage to stand out.

Choosing to become a niche player can be daunting – particularly if you’re an entrepreneurial business that has always said yes to everything – but when you become the niche player, you also become the expert in your category, and that will drive growth.

Inside B2B Lead Generation 2019 is a white paper and interactive webinar researched and produced by Digital Kungfu, a purpose-built lead generation company for tech businesses.